The liver was small, lacking fat and glucose; the musculature was weak.
"It is worth noting that this Russian is supposed to have been here in Essen for 5 months.
The case shows that Eastern workers who arrive here in a severely reduced state of health in general cannot be restored to a normal condition of nutrition by means of the diet offered.
"The Russian's organism could not store up even the slightest amount of energy reserves in fat or carbohydrates.
Moreover, the inferior endurance of the Russian led to an incorrect estimate of his working capacity."
THE PRESIDENT:We will recess for 15 minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL:The Tribunal is again in session.
MR. THAYER:
In a camp maintained by Krupp for the children of Eastern workers, the children were often permanently separated from their parents. This camp, "Voerde West", was approximately 60 kilometers from Essen, and it was almost impossible for the workers to visit their children there. Moreover, the mothers were moved without their children, at the whim of the defendants, to other Krupp plants; and the children were, likewise, turned over to the Reich authorities and removed without the knowledge of the parents. At Voerde West, the children died by the scores of disease and neglect.
An excerpt from the proposals for the Special Labor Allocation meeting of 12 January 1944 reads:
"The following arrangement of shifts should he considered ideal.
1. German women from 6 - 12 o'clock 2. German women from 12 - 16 o'clock 3. Foreign women from 16 - 6 o'clock This time arrangement will not be objected to by the industrial supervisory agency, since no time-limit as to the number of working hours for foreigners including women exists.
Through this arrangement German workers who are still working in 2 or 3 shift-enterprises would become free for other employment requiring little or moderate physical exertion."
All of the defendants made their headquarters at Essen, and could and did see from day to day the slave workers there. All or nearly all of them visited other Krupp plants employing slave labor. All of the Vorstand members and deputy members participated in procuring, exploiting and mistreating slave labor: AAlfried Krupp as War Material and Raw Material Chief, and later head of the whole Krupp empire and leading official in the RVE and RVK; Loeser and Janssen as chiefs of personnel, finance and administration; Houdremont as head of the Machine Plants and plant leader at Essen; Mueller as onetime head, too, of Machine Plants, and as head of war material production; and Eberhardt as also concerned in such production at Essen, Mulhouse, Nurnberg, and elsewhere; Pfirsch as Berlin liaison man helping to get concentration camp labor; Korschan as Bertho Works Chief and head of the Ukraine plants.
Then there were the special labor officers: Ihn who, by his special position as Chief of the Personnel Department and actual executor of the Plant Leader's functions was daily immersed in slave labor matters; Buelow the policeman; Lehmann, who assisted Ihn generally, and had responsibility for procurement of labor and liaison with the DAF; and Kupke, head of the camps for the slave workers.
They accepted responsibility for the care and welfare of their foreign civilian labor, and a large measure of responsibility for prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates and so-called "political prisoners." They took the initiative in making requests and demands for more and more slave workers. Sometimes they specified particular categories of foreign labor which they wanted; and they always knew, after 1942, that their requisitions would be filled with foreign civilians or prisoners of war. No private individual firm in Germany was forced to accept female concentration camp inmates but Krupp took them willingly. These defendants organized in detail the exploitation of all categories of slave labor.
The first slave labor was brought to Essen after the Vorstand had considered and approved this measure. Matters of procurement, care and treatment were thereafter frequently considered by the Vorstand, and various defendants and others were authorized to continue the program. The use of concentration camp inmates at Essen, Markstaedt and Auschwitz was again specifically approved by the Vorstand, All expenditures of more than nominal amounts of money, it is to be recalled, were subject to approval by several Vorstand members.
No erudite legal counsel nor morel philosopher was required by these defendants to inform them that they were committing crimes against their 100,000 slave workers. They are all capable of knowing right from wrong. Some of them may have had less moral perspicacity and greater, calloused unwillingness to see the crime; others, whose conscience made them aware of the crimes, forsook the leadership of that conscience. Those defendants who were not members of the Vorstand had perhaps more knowledge of details, participated more actively in acts of brutality, but had less responsibility for the whole. These are refinements in the degree of guilt which will be illuminated as the evidence is presented. But they do not mitigate the degraded, criminal character of the wholesale enslavement for which the defendants are all responsible.
MR. THAYER:With the permission of the Court, General Taylor will conclude.
CONCLUSION GENERAL TAYLOR:
The charges in the indictment have been divided into three counts, because each count is legally self-sufficient, and for convenience and clarity in presenting the evidence. Viewed realistically, however, this is not three cases, but one case. The motives and ambitions underlying all three counts are the same. Men who do not stop short of enslavement are men who will have no compunctions about precipitating a war; in both cases such men may be governed by prudence and caution, but not by moral factors. Wars may not be started without a promising opportunity for victory; enslavement will not be practiced unless it brings victory a step closer. But prudence and caution are slender guarantees against ruthlessness and arrogance. And it is these latter two qualities which underlie the charges in all three counts. Germany must fight to rise, she must rise to the top, and to reach the top she must stop at nothing.
We stated at the outset that the defendants are hot charged as Nazis. We are, indeed, quite prepared to assume that various aspects of Nazi ideology or tactics may have been distasteful to the Krupp firm and to the defendants. But this, if true, is quite irrelevant to the charges in this case. And we reiterate that the crimes here arose out of certain ideas and attitudes which form part of the Krupp tradition, and that these ideas and attitudes were also a basic part of the ideology of the Nazi party. That is why there was something like a "coalition" "between Adolf Hitler and Gustav Krupp; that is why Krupp policy and Nazi aims fused so successfully.
It is quite possible that Gustav Krupp never heard of Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party until years after its foundation; it is quite possible that, whenever he first heard of Hitler, he did not support the Nazis until Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. But the common ground upon which both stood was established immediately after the First World War. From then on the parallels are, in many respects striking.
The Nazi party program dates from 1920, when it was proclaimed by Hitler at Munich. The first two of the twenty-five points of the Nazi party program call for "the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany" and the "abrogation of the peace treaty of Versailles". The third point calls for land and territory. The twenty-second, point demanded the formation of a national army. The last (25th) point demanded "the formation of a strong central power in the Reich." This last demand led directly to the establishment of the dictatorship of the Third Reich and, as the International Military Tribunal has pointed out: -------------------------------------------1. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p. 175 "The demand for the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany was to play a large part in the events preceding the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia; the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles was to become a decisive motive in attempting to justify the policy of the German government; the demand for land was to be the justification for the acquisition of "living space" at the expense of other nations;.... and the demand for a national army was to result in measures of rearmament on the largest possible scale, and ultimately to war."
In 1920, when Hitler's program was formulated, Krupp had already come to the same conclusion, and was proceeding to execute then most effectively. It was already engaged in a moral struggle with the Allied representatives who were seeking to enforce the disamarment clauses of the Versailles Treaty. Krupp would not change its nature and tradition. "If Germany should ever be reborn, if it should shake off the chains of Versailles, the Krupp concern had to be prepared", said Gustav Krupp. For Krupp and Hitler alike, the Treaty was the immediate obstacle to the fulfillment of the other cherished objectives: reconstitution of "Greater Germany" and the reestablishment of German armed might. For all those purposes, Hitler and Krupp agreed "the formation of a strong central power in the Reich" was most desirable. Just in this vein both of them spoke to the assembled German industrialists on 20 February, 1933, at the most critical moment of Hitler's climb to dictatorship; "only in a politically strong and independent state could economy and business develop", said Gustav.
But the solid working alliance which was formed between Krupp and the Nazi party by, if not before, 1933, was based on more than an abstract agreement on political principles. Each was vitally necessary to the other; on matters of fundamental political policy, Hitler and Krupp fitted together like a mortise and tenon joint.
We have already brought out that Krupp's decision in 1920 to preserve the specialized armament capacity of the firm entailed considerable temporary sacrifice. This decision was made in the expectation that, one day, the bars would be let down and the halcyon times of Bismarck and Wilhelm II would return. After a very lean decade, and in a turbulent political situation, Hitler and the Nazi party alone offered Krupp the fulfillment of these expectations.
Hitler needed Krupp just as badly. He came to power by violent and demagogic appeals to the most chauvinistic and militaristic elements in the German mentality. He could not afford the luxury of inaction and, indeed, was obliged to act speedily in order to maintain his prestige. Within six months, Germany withdrew from the International Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations; within two years, the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty were denounced; within three years, the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland was reocuppied.
All these steps entailed risks, and to justify such risks Hitler desperately needed to muster all avialable military power with the greatest possible speed. And indeed, at the time, the rapidity of the resurgence of Germany's military strength was astonishing and almost miraculous. All of us remember our amazement in 1938 and 1939 that a nation which had been thought so completely disarmed only three or four years earlier had achieved such formidable and terrifying strength.
The evidence in this case goes far to explain this seeming mystery, the solution of which lies chiefly in the extensive and effective clandestine rearmament accomplished by Krupp before Hitler came to power. For various reasons, this fact has been obscured ever since. Until 1937 or 1938, it would have been politically and diplomatically imprudent for Germany to disclose the secret armament history of the Weimar Republic, and after that time Hitler and the Nazis were probably quite reluctant that anyone should think that substantial steps to reestablish German armed might had already been taken long before the advent of Hitler.
It may be remembered that Chancellor Joesph Wirth in his letter to Gustav Krupp, written in August 1940, stated that: "Approximately two years ago, the Reich government made it known, through the Ambassador in Paris, that any publication about previous preparations for the recovery of the national freedom would be discouraged."
Some of the documents showing the enormous importance of Krupp's pre-1933 armament work have already been mentioned. The annual report of the Krupp Board of Directors for the year 1937-1938 stated that "When in 1933, we were again called upon to manufacture war materials in large quantities, we were immediately ready to do so" and that "workshops... were again put into operation and after a short preliminary stage, we were again working at capacity". We have also mentioned Krupp's secret memorandum transmitted to the Germany Army in July 1940, which stated that Krupp's "basic plan of reconversion to war production" had "made it possible at the beginning of the rearmament period to produce straight away heavy artillery, armour plate, tanks and such like in large quantities." To the same effect is Gustav Krupp's article written in 1942, which stated:
"After the assumption of power by Adolf Hitler, I had the satisfaction of being able to report to the Fuehrer that Krupp's stood ready, after a short warming up period, to begin the rearmament of the German people without any gaps of experience..... Since that time, I have often been permitted to accompany the Fuehrer through the old and new workshops and to experience how the workers of Krupp cheered him in gratitude. In the years after 1933, we worked with an incredible intensity and when the war did break out, the speed and results were again increased. We are all proud of having thus contributed to the heretofore magnificent successes of our army."
In a more particular fashion, we have already learned that Germany had submarines in operative only three months after the denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles and had no less than eighteen submarines in service in March, 1936, at the critical time when the Rhineland was reoccupied; these facts the German Navy itself described as "astonishing". We have also learned, by Krupp's own memorandum written in 1942, that "the basic, prinicple of armament and turret design for tanks had already been worked out in 1926". But perhaps the most amazing revelation along this line is contained in the "concluding remarks" of the history written by Krupp's artillery designing department, to which reference has already been made. This most significant paragraph reads as follows:
"The foregoing remarks showed us only weak attempts in the field of gun design for the first years after the World War which aimed to salvage from the collapse what could be salvaged. Beginning with the middle of the twenties, however, we gradually note the aspiration which becomes more and more pronounced to re-build, and also to embark on fresh projects. It is true that the guns then developed can only be classed as fore-runners; they made an appreciable contribution, however, towards clarifying opinions and requirements, thereby making it possible to meet them, and thus they have entirely served their purpose. They were followed very shortly afterwards by the weapons which were finally adopted. Of the guns which were being used in 1939/41, the most important ones were already fully developed in 1933; the mortar was almost completed, and the light field gun 18 also was ready for use. For the quipment which was tested in secrecy, the Army Ordnance Office and the industry stood ready to take up mass production, upon order from the Fuehrer."
On 9 October 1939, just after the successful conclusion of the campaign against Poland, Hitler wrote:
"The warlike equipment of the German people is at present larger in quantity and better in quality for a greater number of German ----------------------------1. Vol. I, Trial of the Major War Criminals, p.183 divisions than in the year 1914.
The weapons themselves, taking a substantial cross-section, are more modern than is the case of any other country in the world at this time. They have just proved their supreme war worthiness in their victorious campaign.... There is no evidence available to show that any country in the world disposes of a better total ammunition stock than the Reich.... The A.A. artillery is not equalled by any country in the World."
And six weeks later, he met with all the Commanders-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to discuss future plans. In support of his exhortations that an aggressive policy of attack should be pursued, Hitler summarized Germany's great advantages in armament over its competitors over its enemies and mentioned:
1. The number of active organizations in Germany is greatest.
2. Superiority of the Luftwaffe.
3. Anti-aircraft beyond all competition.
4. Tank corps.
5. Large number of anti-tank guns, five times as many as 1914 machine guns.
6. German artillery has great superiority because of the 10.5 gun.
7. French superiority in howitzers and mortars does not exist.
Most of the wapons mentioned by Hitler were manufactured by Krupp, or by others according to Krupp designs and specifications. Statements such as those quoted above to make clear the enormous debt which Hitler owed to Krupp policy and Krupp techniques. In 1940, Gustav Krupp once had occasion to emphasize that he had promised "to prove to the Fuehrer from the very outset that workers, experience, construction, and production processes were available to carry out the rearmament quickly and successfully". These promises were well kept.
In fact, the partnership of Hitler and Krupp, and the smooth functioning of Krupp as an integral and important part of the Third Reich, continued through the war, and was finally broken only by Germany's military defeat. During the latter part of the war, Krupp's special and favored status was recognized by a special law which Hitler enacted for the future governance of the Krupp enterprises. -----------------1. Transcript of record before the International Military Tribunal, Exhibit USA-26 In 1942, Gustav and the defendant Alfried Krupp made overtures to Hitler and Martin Bormann for the issuance of a decree permitting "Family Enterprises" to be created by those who had sufficiently established themselves in the scheme of National Socialist economy.
To this overture Ritler responded favorably and ordered the preparation of a special decree to created and perpetuate the Krupp family enterprise. This decree was enacted by Hitler on 12 November 1943. The preamble recites that: "The Enterprise of Friedrich Krupp, a Family Enterprise for 132 years, deserves highest recognition for its incomparable efforts to raise the military potential of Germany".
The "Lex Krupp" proviede for special treatment as to matters of inheritance and taxation, and the regulation of the firm by its own internal statute. By this decree the Krupp firm became in truth a "State within a State" created by the Third Reich. Whoever became the woner of this firm was to bear the name "Krupp" before his own name. The internal statute provided that the leaders of the Krupp firm must be specially approved by Nazi Party and Reich Officials. The defendant Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach assumed the sole ownership and control of the Krupp Enterprise by virtue of the formal approval of Martin Bormann, Chief of the Party Chancellery, and of Dr. Lammers, Reichminister and Chief of the Reichs Chancellery.
Words of grateful appreciation were expressed by the parents of Alfried Krupp to Hitler, for the latter's efforts in establishing the Krupp dynasty in its now legal form. To the words of appreciation, they added the words of assurance to Hitler, that "We shall do everything in our power to equip our son, Alfried, the present owner of the Family Enterprise, for the task of securing and, if possible, increasing the production of the Krupp works, both in peace and war, and in your spirit, and for the benefit of our people".
No other industrial concern in Nazi Germany was honored by such privileges as were thus granted to the Krupp Family Enterprise. By it, Hitler bestowed on the Krupp firm a unique and most favorable position in the commercial and industrial life of Nazi Germany.
We have seen that the Krupp firm favored the creation of a strong central German government; assisted, both with its money and its prestige, in the establishment of Hitler's authority and the dictatorship of the Third Reich; provided the Third Reich with what it most needed to put its aggressive and warlike policies into effect; and played a vital part in the waging of the wars which inevitably followed. We have seen that these things were done not because the Krupp officials were "Nazis" but because they shared with the Nazis certain basic ideas and desires.
We have also seen that, if Krupp was in tune with the policies of aggression of the Third Reich, it was equally in step with Nazi concepts of the methods by which wars should be waged. The utmost ruthlessness and disregard of international conventions came as naturally to Krupp as to the German war lords and the political leaders of the Third Reich. The mines and factories of Austria and Alsace and the Ukraine were seized with as little compunction as the deported workers from France and Poland and Russia were enslaved and terrorized to keep the Krupp machines turning. All this was in full keeping with Nazi scorn for the rights of others and the dignity of man.
We said at the outset that the crimes charged in this case arose out of certain ideas and attitudes which antedated Nazism, and have their own independent and pernicious vitality but which fused with Nazi ideas to produce the Third Reich. No one has expressed this better than Gustav Krupp von Bohlen himself. On the 1st of May 1940, Nudolf Hess and other prominent Nazis visited Essen to confer on the Krupp company the "Golden Banner" which distinguished the works as a "National Socialist Model Plant". Hess was received at the entrance to the hall by Dr. Gustav Krupp, and by the three members of the Vorstand, the defendants Alfried Krupp and Ewald Loeser and the deceased Paul Goerens. As the Krupp report of this occasion tells us, Rudolf Hess delivered a "stirring address" which was "characterized by a most timely political note--settling final accounts with the Jewishplutocratic-democratic world". Gustav Krupp acknowledged the award with the following words:
"I share with the entire personnel of the Krupp Works a pride in this award. It is in honor of a social-political attitude which, while having its roots in a 128 year old tradition; has developed organically so as to fit into the new times, into the National Socialist Germany."
These words accurately epitomize the defendants. Nothing need be added. The tradition of the Krupp firm, and the "social-political" attitude for which it stood, was exactly suited to the moral climate of the Third Reich. There was no crime such a state could commit -- whether it was war, plunder, or slavery -- in which these men would not participate. Long before the Nazis came to power, Krupp was a "National Socialist Model Plant".
JUDGE WILKINS:General Taylor, may I ask you one question? There seems to be an ambiguity which I would like you to clear up for me, if you will. On page 15 of the Indictment, Count 2, it is stated there, "all of the defendants except Lehmann and Kupke".
GENERAL TAYLOR:Yes, your Honor.
JUDGE WILKINS:Now, then, later on, for example in paragraph 34, you use the term, "the defendats", and in paragraph 36, "the defendants."
GENERAL TAYLOR:Your Honors, all throughout -
JUDGE WILKINS:Do I understand -- the question is whether Lehmann and Kupke are charged with only the three counts, that is, Counts 1, 3 and 4?
GENERAL TAYLOR:That is correct, your Honor. Everywhere in Count 2 where it says "the defendants", it refeers to the defendants other than Lehmann and Kupks.
JUDGE WILKINS:Other than Lehmann and Kupke?
GENERAL TAYLOR:Yes, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT:Does that conclude the opening, General Taylor?
GENERAL TAYLOR:Yes, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT:Very well.
DR.KRANZBUEHLER (for the defense): Your Honor, I want to move on behalf of the defendant Alfried Krupp von Bohlen. And I want to say a few things in this connection. The opening statement read today by the Prosecution confirms what the Indictment led us to presume. The charges extend over a very wide field, namely, a period of at least 25 years, and over a great many countries. Much in this field is uncertain, not only the facts, but in particular the law. The Tribunal in the decision pronounced during the arraignment stated that it will be guided by the American conception of justice. My client considers this a guarantee that the rights of the defense will also be maintained by these American prinicples of justice. I, as a German defense counsel, find it extremely difficult to safeguard all these rights of my client, to which he is entitled according to this American conception of law, and which I am obliged to safeguard.
Therefore, in our opinion it would be a requirement of and a centribution to a fair proceeding that the American conceptions of justice, be represented not only by the Tribunal and the Prosecution, but also by the Defense counsel. My client, therefore, today, applied in writing to the Secretary General, in the proper form, to have him represented by the American defense counsel, Messrs. Foley and Carrolle of Hayward, California. Messrs Foley and Carroll have written to me their consent to send a representative of my client to this town within 30 days after approval by this Tribunal. This appointment of an American defense counsel will involve no expense for the American government nor for this Tribunal. It is my opinion that in view of the farreaching importance of this proceeding, such an American defense counsel, besides myself as German defense counsel, should be admitted. Should the Court be of the opinion that only one defense counsel is admitted for Alfried Krupp von Bohlen, then at the time when the American defense counsel for Alfried Krupp von Bohlen appears, I shall relinquish my power of attorney for this client. I therefore request you to make a decision that the representative of Messrs, Foley and Carroll, who is to be sent here, shall be admitted in this proceeding as defense counsel. Since until that time my client will not have the defense counsel which he believes he needs, in view of this accusation and which would be a defense counsel of his own choice, I further move to postpone the proceedings until the Tribunal has made this decision concerning the admittance of the American defense counsel.
THE PRESIDENT:General Taylor, have you anything to say?
GENERAL TAYLOR:Your Honer, the request by defense counsel, I take it, falls within the purview of sub-paragraph c, Article 4 of Ordinance No. 7, which states that a defendant may be represented by a person other than a German attorney in this case, upon special author ization by the Tribunal.
Now, your Honors please, I have not seen the request, if one has been submitted by Dr. Kranzbuehler, nor have I had an opportunity to consider it from the standpoint of the Prosecution. There is no question but what the matter is within the discretion of the tribunal under Ordinance 7. With the Tribunal's permission I should like to see the request in writing, and consider it before stating the Prosecution's position.
THE PRESIDENT:Now I would like to suggest that the request be put in writing and submitted, through the regular channels, through the Secretary General's Office, and we will take it under consideration.
GENERAL TAYLOR:I should like to oppose the suggestion, your Honor, that the proceeding need be delayed pending action on the motion.
THE PRESIDENT:At the request -- can the petition be put in writing this evening?
DR. KRANZBUEHLER:The application has already been submitted, your Honor. It has been submitted in writing to the Secretary General, today, in the prescribed blanks, and it bears the signature of my client Alfried Krupp von Bohlen.
THE PRESIDENT:Well, I understood General Taylor to say that he had not seen the petition.
GENERAL TAYLOR:No, we have not seen it.
DR. KRANZBUEHLER:It takes some time before such an application has been forwarded to the various departments concerned, by the Secretary General. Only yesterday I obtained the approval of the American lawyers' Firm and I therefor could make this application only today.
THE PRESIDENT:We will take the matter under consideration either hear further from General Taylor after he has received a copy of it, if he cares to be heard on that question, or announce a decision tomorrow.
We will take a recess until nine thirty o'clock tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal recessed until 9030 hours 9 December 1947)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America against Alfried Krupp von Bohlen et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany on 9 December 1947, 0930-1700, Justice Anderson, presiding.
THE MARSHAL:The Honorable, the Justices of Military Tribunal III. Military Tribunal III is again in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal. There will be order in the courtroom.
THE PRESIDENT:Mr. Marshal, have you determined that all the defendants are present?
THE MARSHAL:May it please Your Honor, all the defendants are present in the courtroom.
THE PRESIDENT:Judge Daly will preside over today's session.
JUDGE DALY:Just before the end of yesterday's session, counsel for Alfried Krupp von Bohlen made a statement that a request for counsel be entered of record had been filed. That request has now been delivered to the Tribunal. It has received consideration by the Tribunal. The record indicates that the indictment was filed in the office of the Secretary General on 16 August 1947. It was served on the defendant in question on August 18, 1947. On August 20, 1947, the defendant applied for counsel. On August 25, 1947, Dr. Kranzbuehler made application to represent the defendant. The application was granted and an order appointing Dr. Kranzbuehler counsel for the defendant in question was entered on August 25, 1947. It appears to the Tribunal that Dr. Kranzbuehler is a capable attorney. He has had prior experience in the IMT trial and other experience here which make him eminently qualified to represent the defendant in question. It appears a matter of record that this application was filed and the action of the Tribunal upon it.
May we call attention to the fact that Section D of Rule 7 provides that application for particular counsel should be filed with the Secretary General promptly after service of the indictment upon the defendant.
It is quite obvious that the rule has not been followed in this case. The application is denied. Proceed.
MR. KAUFMAN:May it please the Tribunal, the prosecution would like to make a very brief statement outlining its plans for the presentation of its case. The prosecution will follow the usual procedure, as modified by the rulings of the Tribunal and by the conference between the Tribunal and the members of the prosecution and the defense counsel staff. The prosecution's plans are directed toward an expeditious presentation of the case. It is anticipated that the documents will be explained and excerpts read in such cases as the prosecution believes that such procedure will be of actual assistance to the Tribunal and will offer a means to the Tribunal and to defense counsel for a saving of time in the study of the documents and in the presentation of the defense case. Our comments on the documents will be based upon the plan which I have outlined. In some cases, we may not go far enough in commenting upon the documents because of overemphasis on expeditious procedure. We respectfully ask for the assistance of the Tribunal in calling to our attention points which might be clarified more quickly by a brief comment by the prosecution than by detailed study of some of these documents. Such further comment might be called for in some instances in order to permit the defendants to know which portions and what concludions the prosecution relies upon, so that the defense will not needlessly call witnesses nor offer a lengthly testimony concerning portions of documents which the prosecution does not feel are particularly important in this case.
Shortly after the arraignment of the defendants, the prosecution made available a basic information summary which contains background and explanatory material. Every effort was made in the preparation of this material to avoid controversial issues. It is known to the Tribunal and to defense counsel that this basic information summary will not be offered in evidence in this case although some portions included in the summary -
such as the charts -- will later be offered in evidence, and that much of the remainder of the summary is based upon evidence which will be introduced. The defense counsel have been invited to bring to our attention any errors which they may find in this summary.
Conferences were held with the defense counsel prior to the opening of this case in an effort to reach an agreement in respect to the organizational charts. Agreement has been reached as to a large part of the charts, although there are some matters at issue concerning which the prosecution will offer evidence and concerning which the defense also is of course entitled to offer evidence. The wall charts and the charts in the basic information summary are the prosecution's charts. Dr. Kranzbuehler believes that the method of presentation of these charts although factually correct so far as it goes -- or presumably factually correct -does not give the full picture or represent the picture as the defense would represent it. The prosecution concedes that these charts do not represent all of the Krupp officialdom and we ourselves call attention to the fact that on a lower level the defendants there represented were not alone. There were others. We believe that the charts fairly represent the position of the defendants in the customary form, and probably in the only form possible within the mechanical limitations of visual aids.
The prosecution proposes to present its evidence in an order of proof which follows closely the indictment. Some modifications of this order will be made from time to time in order to put basic material first and also to prevent the mechanical difficulties of processing of documents from interfering with the continuous offer of proof to the Tribunal.